Erik har temauge om ‘Sund matematik’ – en blanding af matematik og ernæringslære, tilsyneladende, og Erik kom til at diskutere med en af lærerne, som spurgte, om man kunne undvære grøntsager? Erik vidste udmærket godt hvad han forventedes at svare, men han sagde alligevel at ‘ja, det kunne man godt, for det gjorde eskimoerne, de kunne jo ikke rigtig dyrke grøntsager’.
Det mente læreren naturligvis var forkert, hun sagde en masse om skørbug, og nu kommer vi til pointen: Erik havde ret, men han afstod fra at diskutere med hende resten af dagen. Han gav bare de svar, han vidste var i overensstemmelse med konventionel visdom. Mor er stolt.
Men drengen har jo ret:
As for vitamin C, the source in the Eskimo diet was long a mystery. Most animals can synthesize their own vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, in their livers, but humans are among the exceptions, along with other primates and oddballs like guinea pigs and bats. If we don’t ingest enough of it, we fall apart from scurvy, a gruesome connective-tissue disease. In the United States today we can get ample supplies from orange juice, citrus fruits, and fresh vegetables. But vitamin C oxidizes with time; getting enough from a ship’s provisions was tricky for early 18th- and 19th-century voyagers to the polar regions. Scurvy—joint pain, rotting gums, leaky blood vessels, physical and mental degeneration—plagued European and U.S. expeditions even in the 20th century. However, Arctic peoples living on fresh fish and meat were free of the disease.
In fact, all it takes to ward off scurvy is a daily dose of 10 milligrams, says Karen Fediuk, a consulting dietitian and former graduate student of Harriet Kuhnlein’s who did her master’s thesis on vitamin C. (That’s far less than the U.S. recommended daily allowance of 75 to 90 milligrams—75 for women, 90 for men.) Native foods easily supply those 10 milligrams of scurvy prevention, especially when organ meats—preferably raw—are on the menu. For a study published with Kuhnlein in 2002, Fediuk compared the vitamin C content of 100-gram (3.55-ounce) samples of foods eaten by Inuit women living in the Canadian Arctic: Raw caribou liver supplied almost 24 milligrams, seal brain close to 15 milligrams, and raw kelp more than 28 milligrams. Still higher levels were found in whale skin and muktuk.
As you might guess from its antiscorbutic role, vitamin C is crucial for the synthesis of connective tissue, including the matrix of skin. “Wherever collagen’s made, you can expect vitamin C,” says Kuhnlein. Thick skinned, chewy, and collagen rich, raw muktuk can serve up an impressive 36 milligrams in a 100-gram piece, according to Fediuk’s analyses. “Weight for weight, it’s as good as orange juice,” she says. Traditional Inuit practices like freezing meat and fish and frequently eating them raw, she notes, conserve vitamin C, which is easily cooked off and lost in food processing.
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/inuit-paradox/article_view?b_start:int=0
Men okay, man må jo lade læreren at vi ikke kan undvære frugt og grønt med mindre vi er villige til at æde rå hud, råt kød og rå lever. Hvordan hun forklarer at eskimoerne faktisk levede af deres traditionelle kost i tusindvis af år ved jeg dog ikke. Lad os håbe det spørgsmål bliver en sten i skoen, der gør hende mere nysgerrig over for alverdens muligheder.
Noget tyder på at han er mere følelsesmæssigt moden end jeg er, for jeg har åbenbart brug for at få ret på hans vegne 
